[Revised entry by Michael Wade on January 12, 2026.
Changes to: Bibliography]
Ecological genetics is the broad field of studies that investigates the relationship between genetic change and features of the biotic and abiotic environment. In population genetic theory, the role of the environment in adaptive evolution tends to be hidden in the recursion equations for gene frequency dynamics, where the common assumption of a constant selection coefficient implies a constant relationship between genotype, phenotype and fitness irrespective of environment. For ecological genetics, in contrast, the…

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